Email this article to a friend

From The Times, April 25, 3016: A group of dinosaurs would have become extinct even without the disaster that occurred at the beginning of the third millennium, according to new research.

iStockPhoto

The dinosaurs of banking will die out because of an inability to adapt to changes in their environment

Palaeontologists at the University of Reading believe that the dinosaurs – known as global investment banks – would have died out anyway due to an inability to adapt to changes in their environment.

The findings cast doubt on the previously accepted theory that the banks were wiped out by the effects of a massive financial shock that caused rising capital levels and a cooling of the economic climate. Although this posed a serious new challenge to the banks, they were already threatened by the emergence of nimbler and more adaptable species that did not require such a rich diet, the scientists have concluded.

For years the investment banks dominated the financial world, growing ever larger as they exploited other species in what some experts have described as a form of parasitism. They thrived during a period when the conditions were particularly favourable, featuring a warm climate, lush vegetation and abundant liquidity.

Some of the creatures, such as Tyrannosaurus Sachs, were fearsome carnivores that stalked the globe striking terror into other dinosaurs and even indulging in a bit of cannibalism on the side. Others, such as Deutschedocus, were huge, ponderous flow monsters that had to eat constantly to survive. Deutschedocus proved particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment as it was entirely dependent on one type of food whereas most of its rivals had a more varied diet.

One of the strangest of the group was Citipati, a toothless birdlike beast that looked as if it had been constructed by sticking together body parts from a number of completely unrelated animals.

In around 2008, the earth suffered a massive impact that threw up a huge cloud of regulation, stifling activity and reducing growth. What had once been a single global habitat started to be divided by rising sea levels into separate regions, preventing the investment banks from roaming freely and exploiting different local conditions. After 2016, Britain split off from the rest of the European landmass and before long lost many of its large dinosaurs.

Scientists say that some of the investment banks, such as Barclasorous, had become so large and slow-moving that it simply took too long for them to realise that they were under threat and had to change. It is said that messages would spend weeks travelling through the Barclasorous nervous system, consisting of 375 management committees, and sometimes orders from the centre never reached the limbs.

Not that all the investment bank dinosaurs were huge, lumbering giants. A sub-group of boutique dinosaurs, called Dromaeosaurs, were small but very effective predators, often taking the choice morsels from kills made by their bigger rivals. In addition to the well-known Velociraptor, this group included highly successful scavengers such as the Robeyraptor and the Zaouiraptor. Although they flourished for a time, these smaller raptors tended to be relatively short-lived.

The need for the giant investment banks to change was sometimes obscured by false dawns. At the start of 2016, the dinosaurs faced what appeared to be signs of a new ice age. Investors, the small and often timid creatures that provided the bulk of their food, went into deep hibernation. This exacerbated the impact of the cooler and drier climate, which had brought a dangerous reduction in liquidity.

The predators were now threatened with starvation. Some began to consider drastic action, including crash diets, amputation of limbs and even conversion to vegetarianism. But the temperature suddenly recovered, due partly to a renewed outbreak of central bank activism. This seemed to renew hope among some of the investment banks that it was only a matter of time before the climate improved further. Others recognised that the new world would be much more difficult for them, but hoped that if only they could survive long enough, other dinosaurs would die out, leaving them with a bigger share of the reduced food supply.

Experts are divided on whether the dinosaurs could have adapted more effectively or whether they were doomed. Whatever the answer, the new research suggests that the main cause of their decline was the ability of new species to compete more effectively for limited resources. Unencumbered by the investment bank dinosaurs’ huge scale, smaller and more specialist rivals found ways to outwit the dumb giants. The dinosaurs discovered that the size that had once been a strength was now a handicap. The inefficiency of their enormous bodies, which had not mattered during the years of plenty, now put them at a significant competitive disadvantage.

At first, many of the new rivals did not compete head-on with the dinosaurs or attack them directly. But they gradually stole parts of their territory, taking advantage of lingering complacency among the long-term masters of the earth.

Not all the dinosaurs were oblivious to the threat from new species. Some even set up incubators to nurture the next generation. But the smartest of the new competitors, the fintech mammals, simply stole the eggs.

Some experts believe that the dinosaurs could have at least slowed their demise by working together on common strategies to see off the new threats. Yet, after years of bloody competition, the banks found it very difficult to establish trust and co-operate.

Of course, some of the dinosaurs did eventually adapt, the most successful route being the development of wings that enabled them to escape regulatory constraints. But many of the species simply died out. Their inability to change continues to baffle some experts, leading to theories such as palaeo-weltschmerz, which suggests that they became bored and self-obsessed, losing all interest in the continuation of the species.

But, according to the Reading scientists, there is one big remaining mystery.

That is why the banks and their descendants failed to prevent the financial world being taken over by a new species of giant predators – the gargantuan Googlosaurs.